Rupert Collins-White

A VISIT HOME A right-wing acquaintance - a man I have met just once before, during lockdown - comes to visit me. He says that the problem with Rishi Sunak is that his voice is too high. He’s not convincing as a leader. I say I can imagine him in a white coat, behind the counter of a pharmacy discussing haemorrhoid creams. My friend says the politicians with deeper voices do much better. It is unfortunate for people of the left that Keir Starmer sounds robotic and mindless, as if he were reading from a menu. My friend says that men with deep voices make for the best seducers. He adds that David Beckham’s voice undermines his masculinity, which is still considerable. As I try to fall asleep later, waking up approximately every twenty minutes, wondering if the clock has stopped, I consider all of this. The actor Brian Blessed, known for his booming voice, must be quids in, a master of the universe. My family and I have been planning a brief trip home this weekend. But the clinical nurse is adamant that a physiotherapist should visit my home before I do, to ensure, as he puts it, that the place is “safe” for me and my wheelchair. I wonder if this guy really has the right to tell me where I can and can’t go, after all I am not in prison, I haven’t been kidnapped. The following morning I’m in my wheelchair and Isabella pushes me out of the hospital and across the road to the bus stop. Almost straight away a bus comes, its ramp slides out I’m shoved on. Ten minutes later I am on the Shepherd’s Bush road where Tracey and the dog Cairo meet me. This is the first time I’ve seen Cairo since my accident. He is quite big and bouncy, and I wonder if he recognises me; after all he loves everyone. Together we walk down the familiar street towards my house. It has been eight months since I’ve been here. I didn’t want to become too upset, and so I tried imagine I’d been away on a long holiday. Isabella and Tracey push me into my house and Carlo joins us. Thankfully the place is the same, except that I am at a lower angle; I can’t get an overview as I could before. The chair is uncomfortable, and I know I won’t be able to stay long before I have to go back to bed in the hospital.  I am glad Isabella has been living here, although she has allowed  the garden to become overgrown. In another life I would be out there with a machete, but she loves it this way, where she entertains foxes, birds and squirrels. We have lunch and sit together with the dog. I wish I could go upstairs and see my study again, and the bedroom, but that is impossible. We wonder what adjustments will need to be made to the house, for it to become habitable again by me. On Sunday Isabella and Kier push me to the Thames, near Hammersmith Bridge, and we walk along the riverside path, up to the back of the River Cafe. I’ve lived in this area, around West Kensington and Barons Court, since I was a student in 1976 and have cycled this way scores of times. Kier says he remembers long rides with me as a kid, and Isabella and I used to walk the dog along the river path. The dog was more of a menace then, and loved to take a dive into the Thames, and it was always a lot of trouble to persuade him to come out, covered in thick mud. In fact he was a menace all round. One time, while charging across Ravenscourt park, he tore a woman’s hijab from her head and ran off with it in his teeth; another time he stole a blind man’s cane. He still steals the balls of other dogs and can cause mayhem during picnic season. I’ve started to have very long, lurid and convoluted dreams. They are like novellas. A friend suggests this may be a side effect of the antidepressants I’m taking. The other night I woke up in a cold sweat yelling my head off, dreaming I was being swallowed by a snake, and a worried nurse came into my room and started asking me questions which would assure her that I hadn’t lost my mind: where was I? What was my name? and who was the Prime Minister?